Tight Lines (18 page)

“Your predatory friend wouldn’t like that.”

“Willard? You met him, then.”

“Yes. He was in yesterday. He’s starting to circle around.”

She smiled. “He is a buzzard, isn’t he? Still, the commission must get the place, regardless of Willard Ellington. But there is a little money there for Melissa, I trust.”

“There is actually quite a bit,” I said.

She closed her eyes. “Good. This feels like a good thing. I think of Terri and her little Melissa, and I think of—of Mary Ellen.”

I sipped my tea.

“I was thirty-two when Charles and I married,” she said. “He had just turned forty. Both of us, I think, were surprised by it. We had more or less resigned ourselves to single life. I don’t know if it was what they call love. It felt more like convenience. Both of us were independent sorts, fixed in our ways, not accustomed to partnership. I think Charles felt the breath of advancing years on the back of his neck. He had no heirs. His brother did not survive a Japanese prison camp. Both of his parents were dead. We never really talked about it. But the deal, I think, was that I would give him an heir. It took nearly ten years to accomplish. We were both deep into middle age by then. I don’t think either of us had a great capacity for love. At least not the kind of love a parent is expected to have for his child. Not the kind of love Terri has for her Melissa. Maybe if you don’t have much money, you make up for it with love. And, by the same logic, if you have plenty of money you shortchange the child in the love department. I don’t know. I have limited experience. I do know that we didn’t do right by her.”

“I’m sure you did the best you could,” I murmured.

“Oh, I’m sure we didn’t,” she said. “We—” She stopped suddenly. I turned to look at her. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her forehead glistened with perspiration.

“Susan?”

“Take my hand, Brady.”

I found her hand. She gripped mine hard. “Oh, shit,” she whispered through clenched teeth. She panted rapidly through her mouth, the way women are taught in natural childbirth classes to control labor pains. When giving birth. Or giving death.

After a minute or two, her grip on my hand relaxed and she let out a long, deep breath. She opened her eyes and looked at me.

“Okay?” I said.

“It comes so quickly. I don’t know when to expect it. I’m sorry.”

“What about medication, Susan? You shouldn’t have to tolerate that.”

“I do not want to die in some fuzzy drug world. I don’t have much time. I want at least to be aware of what there is left of it for me.”

I nodded. “I understand.”

She breathed deeply again. “I’m all right now.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “Anyway, Mary Ellen was a wild, brilliant child. Very bright, very uncontrolled, very manipulative. Neither Charles nor I understood that warmth and love was all she needed. He coped with her willfulness by buying things for her. I did not approve. I believed in discipline. Punishment. So Charles spoiled her and I alienated her. She learned how to play us off against each other by the time she could talk. I have been over it and over it in my mind ever since you told me she—was dead. And I realize now what happened. I tried to blame him. It
was
his fault. But mine equally. We both killed her. Charles and I. Because, God help us, we didn’t love her. And she knew it.”

“You’re being too hard on yourself, Susan. Blaming yourself isn’t right. There is no evidence that Mary Ellen committed suicide.”

“I’m not necessarily talking about suicide, Brady. I just mean the whole course of her life, which took her to the place where she had to die young. Charles and I, we had power over that.”

“Replaying it doesn’t do anybody any good.”

“It does me good,” she said. “I want to figure it out. Listen. We put her in private schools. She got terrible grades. All her teachers said she was brilliant, gifted. But her energies went into manipulation, not schoolwork. One of her male teachers got fired when she was thirteen. Do you know why?”

I nodded. “I guess I can figure it out.”

“The school persuaded Charles not to press charges. If I’d had my way, that man would have gone to prison. But you know Charles.”

“No,” I said quietly, “I never knew Charles. You hired me after he died, remember?”

She touched my arm. “Of course. I’m sorry. Anyway, I was wrong. That poor teacher didn’t victimize Mary Ellen Ames. It wasn’t his fault. He was
her
victim. She was a mature woman—physically—at thirteen, and more skilled at deceit than most adults. She had an abortion at fifteen, Brady, and another a year later. She somehow graduated and got into college. Her father’s name and her father’s money—and his connections—did it for her. She had terrible grades and astronomical scores on her standardized tests. Anyhow, then Charles died, and she left with that Arab person, and… well, dammit, anyway.”

“Mary Ellen had a big portrait of Charles in her condominium. It occupied a place of honor on her wall.”

“She was a complex person, even as a child,” said Susan. She looked up at me. Her smile was wan. “Probably no portraits of her mother, huh?”

I put my arm around her shoulder and held her against me. I didn’t answer her question. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

After a moment, she said, “I’m sorry, dear Brady. You came here to cheer me up. I haven’t been very cooperative, I’m afraid.”

“That’s okay, Susan.”

“It’s just that when you’re at the end of your life you have nowhere to look except back. And what I see doesn’t please me.”

“We don’t always get to pick our lives for ourselves,” I said. “We bumble through them, doing the best we can at the time. Second-guessing ourselves is pretty fruitless.”

She snuggled against me. Her voice became dreamy. “She loved him, you know. She worshipped him. And all he ever did for her, all he ever gave her, was money. It’s not what she wanted. I—I tried to make her a good person. She hated me for it. It wasn’t fair. But somebody had to try. At least I tried. He wouldn’t.”

Her voice trailed off. I continued to hold her. After a few minutes, I realized she was sleeping. I eased myself off the sofa and lifted her thin legs up onto it. She shifted, moaned. I tucked the comforter around her, propped a pillow under her head, and left the room.

Terri invited me to stay for a drink. I declined. I wanted to put some distance between myself and the old Ames mansion in Concord.

W
HEN I GOT BACK
to my apartment that evening, the little red light on my answering machine was winking. Blink, blink, pause, blink, blink, pause. Two messages. I took off my jacket and tossed it onto the sofa. My necktie followed it. My shoes tumbled under the kitchen table.

Then I went into my bedroom and stripped down to my underwear. I tried to decide who I wanted to be trying to reach me. Either of my sons. Even if they wanted money, or wanted to complain about their mother. I always liked to hear from them. Or Terri. But I’d just seen Terri.

I pulled on my jeans and sweatshirt and padded back to the living room in my stocking feet. I pressed the button on the machine.

“Brady, it’s Gloria” came the first voice, as though I needed her to identify it. “It’s Tuesday, a little before seven. Give me a call. I’m here all evening.”

There was a beep, then another voice, this one belonging to a man. “Ah, Mr. Coyne, this is Dave Finn here. Remember? Your mugger?” He laughed. “Mary Ellen’s friend. I wanna talk to you, huh? You, um, shit, I guess I gotta try you again. I ain’t got a phone. Anyways, like I said, I’ll try you again. I guess that’s the message.”

The machine clunked and rewound its tape. I went to the cabinet and took down my bottle of Rebel Yell. I poured an inch into a tumbler, plopped three ice cubes into it, and sat at the table with it. I took a long sip, lit a Winston, stared out the window at the dark ocean, and then pecked out the Wellesley number.

Gloria answered with her throaty “Hello?”

“Hi, hon.”

“Oh, Brady. Thanks for getting back to me.”

“Is everything okay?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t it be?”

“I don’t know. The boys, whatever.”

“The boys are fine, as far as I know. Of course, I never hear from William.”

“Me, neither.”

“Well,” she said after a pause, “the reason I called was just to check on your thinking about the house. You said you’d get back to me. It’s been over a week.”

It sounded to me like an accusation. Gloria had a way of making the most innocuous statements sound like accusations. And no matter how outlandish her accusations were, or how clearly I realized that they were not intended to be accusations, they always made me feel defensive. “A week?” I said. “You sure?”

“Positive. We had lunch a week ago Friday. I think I told you I could wait a couple weeks. But I just figured maybe you’d made up your mind, and I’d really like to know.”

“Well,” I said, “I honestly haven’t given it much thought. I’ve been pretty much preoccupied with a very complicated matter for a client.”

“If you don’t want the house, you can just say so.”

I
didn’t
want the damn house. I didn’t have to give it any thought whatsoever. But for some reason I was reluctant to say it. “Give me a few more days. It’s a difficult decision.”

“Fine. Call me by Friday, then, okay?”

“Sure. Will do. Listen, is Joey around?”

“Joseph is hardly ever around. Since he got his license…”

“Well, give him my love.”

“I will, Brady. Talk to you by Friday, then, huh?”

“You bet.”

“Don’t forget.”

“I won’t.”

I might, I thought as I hung up the phone. I might forget.

The phone rang a few minutes later. When I answered it, a woman’s voice said, “Brady?”

I couldn’t place the voice. I was vaguely disappointed to realize it wasn’t Terri. “Yes. Who’s this?”

“Robin McAllister. I tried you a few minutes ago. Your line was busy. Can I talk to you?”

“Sure. Go ahead.”

“Not on the phone.”

“What’s up, Robin?”

“It’s Warren. I’m—concerned.”

Oh, shit, I thought. She’s found out about Mary Ellen. “We can meet somewhere, if you want,” I said.

“You name it.”

“It doesn’t matter to me.”

She hesitated. “How about that revolving lounge on top of the Hyatt on Memorial Drive? What’s it called?”

“The Spinnaker,” I said. “Cute, huh?”

“Yes,” she said. “Cute. That’s more or less equidistant for us, I think.”

“That’s fine. When?”

“An hour?”

“Okay.”

I had to change my clothes again. I avoided a necktie by pulling a sweater over a shirt. I shrugged into a sport jacket and drove over to the Hyatt.

The Spinnaker Lounge on the top floor of the Hyatt Regency rotates at the rate of about one revolution every fifteen minutes. Some people find it disconcerting. Some people claim to get motion sickness up there. But it offers a good and ever-shifting view of the Charles River and, beyond it, the city. I can pick out my office building from up there.

Robin McAllister was already there, rotating. She was wearing a red dress with a low neckline. She had makeup around her eyes. I had never seen her dressed up before. She looked spectacular.

I sat across from her. “Hi,” I said.

She smiled. “Thanks a lot for coming,” she said. “I had to talk to somebody…” She waved her hand in the air. “Somebody discreet.”

“A lawyer.”

“That’s not what I meant. Somebody—a friend. Who knows what’s going on.”

She knows about Warren and Mary Ellen, I thought again. I didn’t want to be in the middle of this one.

“Where’s Warren tonight?” I said.

“It’s Tuesday. He’s got his seminar at the hospital on Tuesdays.”

“Right. I remember.”

A waitress came to the table. Robin asked for a glass of white wine. I ordered a bourbon old-fashioned.

When the waitress left, Robin reached across the table and touched my hand. “He’s taking this hard.”

“This?”

“The death of his patient there. That young woman.”

“Mary Ellen Ames.”

She nodded.

I revised my guess. She didn’t know. But she suspected.

“Brady,” she said, “what’s going on? Do they think she killed herself? Warren won’t talk about it. He just broods. It’s unlike him. He acts—guilty, or something. Was it suicide?”

“I don’t know. They haven’t figured it out. It could be. They haven’t discounted murder.”

Her eyes widened. “Murder,” she whispered.

I nodded.

“Do they have a suspect?”

“Not really. Which means, at this point, that everybody’s a suspect. They’re trying to sort it out.”

“I thought she drowned.”

“She did. I guess it was probably an accident. They just haven’t said so officially yet.”

Our drinks arrived. After the waitress left, Robin said, “No wonder Warren’s upset. I don’t know what to say to him. I’d like to help. Make him feel better. He’s taking it so hard. I wish he’d talk to me. But he’s so damned circumspect and proper when it comes to his patients.”

“I guess all you can do is love him.”

She smiled. “That’s easy. But I worry about him. He hasn’t even gone fishing lately. He used to go every Sunday. It was good for him. He’d always come back rejuvenated.” She touched my hand. “You could take him fishing, Brady.”

I nodded. “Sure. I could do that.”

“Would you?”

“I’d be happy to. Maybe not this weekend, but soon.”

“Don’t let on that we talked about it, okay?”

“Of course not.”

“He wouldn’t want me to be doing this. He’s a very private man. Very proud.”

“I understand.”

We sipped our drinks quietly for a minute or two. Then Robin said, “Brady?”

“Yes?”

“If there’s anything you can tell me that will help me to understand, to help him—will you?”

“There’s not much, Robin. Like I said, they’re just trying to rule out suicide or murder, that’s all.”

“But if something should come up?”

I shrugged. “Within the boundaries of my profession, sure, I’ll tell you.”

“Thank you. You’ve made me feel better.”

We finished our drinks and took the elevator down to the parking garage. Robin gave me a quick hug and drove away.